glad i, without really meaning to, heeded the forum advice wrt this, which is 1) to not expect much, 2) read player of games first. i had forgotten how much i liked player of games until a moment in the many epilogues of this, where we’re told a drone has retired and gotten into model trains, at which point i remembered how much that player of games robot slays – how good banks clearly is at writing machines when he actually goes for it.
player of games is also, notably, a quick, focused book. consider phlebas is focused, but not quick, spending a lot of words on a handful of things and characters in a way that just feels inefficient and unengaging.
at its worst, and for big chunks, it’s boring. which isn’t to say the writing’s dry or nothing happens. lots happens, but the action is overwritten and tiring, and is all in service of a plot and character i lacked investment in. the plot is notably simple: it’s a novel full of spies which lacks intrigue, and compensates with brute force.
it is also a novel with a ringworld and shapeshifting and do-anything spacesuits and future trains (shuttling about in what i can only imagine as a future glagow subway), and by the end all i wanted was

for the trains to crash already. and i love trains! and the future!

but those worldbuilding bits never feels much more than perfunctory, if convincing, and to the service of thin ideas. banks gestures to themes and ideological conflicts, but they’re inconsistently dealt with, and often at odds with the action of the moment, giving them a tangental feeling, despite also being central to the world.
the whole book is underscored by the kind of nasty, decedent violence and grim view of human nature which is honestly a reason i don’t go back to his iain bankses very often. it’s rough to read! it’s a little scary, in a, what’s this guy gonna force me thru next way! in this novel, some of that violence is alright, makes sense, is very occasionally almost fun, but bits like the island episode are just unpleasant.

i also found the glut of deaths towards the end, and particularly the epilogue one, sort of perplexingly cruel.

i did like the ironic note of the final page, which i thinks comes from this being banks’ way, but i also think it would have hit harder in a sharper book, which was doing less thematically and had characters with more to them.